Scorching news roundup: 2024 was the world’s hottest on record, plus other headlines

For PropertyGuru’s news roundup, with California ravaged by forest fires, we focus on the rising threat of global warming. The world just experienced the first full year in which global temperatures exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times. 2024 is recorded as the hottest year in Indonesia’s history. The EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service warns that while 2024 is the hottest year on record, new temperature records are expected in the future.

In 2024, world temperatures rose by above 1.5°C for the first time

The world just experienced the first full year in which global temperatures exceeded 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times, scientists said last 10th January. Last year was the world’s hottest since records began. The planet’s average temperature in 2024 was 1.6 degrees Celsius higher than in 1850-1900, the “pre-industrial period” before humans began burning CO2-emitting fossil fuels on a large scale. But even as the costs of these disasters spiral, CNA reports that the political will to invest in curbing emissions has waned in some countries.

2024 marks the hottest year in Indonesia’s history

The Indonesian Agency for Meteorology, Climatology, and Geophysics (BMKG) reported on 3rd January that 2024 is recorded as the hottest year in the Southeast Asian country’s history.

As cited in VietnamPlus, this reflects a global trend, with many countries also reporting unprecedented temperature increases, sounding alarm on the urgent need for climate action. According to BMKG, the average temperature in Indonesia in 2024 reached 27.5°C, which was 0.8°C higher than the average temperature from 1991 to 2020. This data was collected from 113 monitoring stations nationwide.

New global warming records on the way, warns EU climate change service

With 2024 set to be the hottest year on record, new temperature records are expected soon, warned the head of the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service on PNA. Copernicus data says last year was the hottest on record, with the global average temperature increase reaching the 1.5°C threshold of the Paris Climate Agreement for the first time. “The fundamental threat that we are facing is the fact that the climate we are experiencing now is completely different from the climate in which we grew up, the climate of our fathers and grandparents and older generations. So the entire society needs to adapt to a climate that is fundamentally different,” Copernicus’ Carlo Buontempo told Anadolu. Emphasizing that this situation affects all areas of natural systems, Buontempo said: “We see changes in the water cycle. We see changes in agriculture. We see changes in our own health, with heat-related mortality going up by 30 percent in the last 20 years in Europe.”

The Property Report editors wrote this article. For more information, email: [email protected].